Exercise Eases Depression in Heart Failure patients: Study

A new study published in the journal of American Medical Association suggests that "moderate exercise helps ease depression in patients with chronic heart failure and is also associated with small but significant reductions in death and hospitalization."

According to researchers, patients who exercised for one hour or half an hour per week had slightly lower depression scores. This study shows a strong link between mental and physical health and how exercise may help in improving both.

It is noticed that around 5 million people suffer from heart failures in the United States alone. Every year there are nearly half a million new heart cases registered. And 40 percent of heart failure patients suffer from depression.

James A Blumenthal, Ph. D, of Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC and colleagues had 2,322 stable heart failure patients participate in a randomized controlled trial at 82 medical clinical centers located in the United States, Canada and France. The patients were assessed for depression using a Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) II questionnaire.

 "We do not know what comes first - heart disease or depression - but we do know the two are often related, and if depression gets worse, people have worse outcomes," said Blumenthal. "Exercise has been shown to be safe for people with heart disease, and it also improves depression. These data show the combined benefits of exercise for this population include improved mental health and improved cardio-vascular health."

The study that was held between 2003 and 2007 had patients who were randomly assigned to either supervised aerobic exercise or had to be educated about the problem and given complete heart failure care. The study lasted for a year.  The participants were initially asked to exercise for 90 minutes for the first three months and were then asked to exercise for 120 minutes or more per week.

About 28 percent of the patients were clinically depressed at the start of the study, based on a questionnaire covering 21 different symptoms.

After three months the researchers counted the average BDI score for the people who exercised and they noticed the score was 8.95 which was less when compared to 9.70 for the typical group. Lower BDI II scores indicated less depression symptoms.

Depression scores in general - and especially in people with a diagnosis of depression - tended to drop with exercise. But the disparity between exercisers and non-exercisers was small, equal to participants scoring similarly on 20 out of 21 symptoms and exercisers getting a "mild" score on one symptom where the usual care group got a "moderate" or "severe" score.

 Blumenthal concluded saying, "We know that exercise is beneficial in terms of improving cardiovascular fitness. Now we know depression is also reduced in these patients. For people who were more depressed, they experienced a greater reduction in their depressive symptoms with exercise."